• PUBLISHED on November 13, 2014

Myriam Bleau, Soft Revolvers, 2014. (photo: Reilly Forbes) Sounds Like is an annual audio art festival based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Started in 2011 by AKA artist-run, it quickly expanded to a three-fold partnership between PAVED Arts, a Saskatoon media based artist-run gallery and production centre and Holophon, a non-profit organization that seeks to unite communities using sound as an […]

• PUBLISHED on November 11, 2011

Rachael G. Seupersad Public Art: What you need to know October 11th @ 7 PM AKA Gallery Event Space Rachael Seupersad will speak about the issues and ideas surrounding public art in general as a precursor to going into the details of applying on calls and how the process works. Since 2008, Seupersad has led […]

• PUBLISHED on November 04, 2011

Beginning to conceptualise the ideas presented in Baker’s works in a materialist sense allows us to begin to read how the works encode physical space as a series of fractured topographies.

• PUBLISHED on November 02, 2011

Beginning to conceptualise the ideas presented in Baker’s works in a materialist sense allows us to begin to read how the works encode physical space as a series of fractured topographies. What is depicted is a homogenous materiality (discarded plastics) transmogrified to replicate a neo-Romantic concept of the whole. Baker’s worlds, as depicted in the Continuity in Disgrace and Discards portend a technique of art reminiscent of Shylovsky’s “defamiliarisation”; an attempt to extend the process of perception through the radical distancing of the viewer to the imagined lifeworld. Baker presents a dedicated space in which the viewer must contemplate the idea of inhabitation.

• PUBLISHED on September 26, 2011

PscheDADA  September 16 to October 21 2011    Co curated by Tod Emel (AKA) and David LaRivierre (PAVED ARTS) Featured AKA artists are Arthur Desmarteaux & Allison Moore (Montréal, QC) and Larry Carlson (New York, NY). PAVED features Keith Murray (Calgary, AB), Jeremy Shaw (Berlin) and Noxious Sector (Dartmouth,Victoria, Seattle), which is comprised of a trio […]

• PUBLISHED on September 17, 2011

Here we go. We are, after all, here to go. Let’s set out from the beginning with an implicit admission of ignorance, or uncertainty, at the very least. For if we set out expecting to have our prejudices and conceits confirmed, confirmed they will be. Saying “I don’t know” will stimulate a cascade of action potential across our prefrontal cortices and what happens next is anyone’s guess. This assemblage of ideas is presented as an initiation into an experiential methodology, tinged here and there with healthy doses of revealing madness; a metaheuristic tool for thinking about thinking.

• PUBLISHED on July 27, 2011

Listen to this! For the final weekend in May of 2011, AKA Gallery presents two evenings of experimental sound art from an exciting and varied group of audio artists brought together from across the country. The festival’s title refers both to simile and the game of charades. Along those lines, the artists participating at Sounds Like… will collectively navigate the nuanced connections between sound and the bodily actions and physical gestures of performance. From densely layered soundscapes and audio collage to subtle plays of tonal difference, from bombastic movements of cathartic exuberance to delicate explorations of multi-dimensional space, these performances will challenge expectations of what art is supposed to sound like.

• PUBLISHED on July 25, 2011

Sounds Like… Curatorial Statement Tod Emel <raises index finger> “First word…” <nodding; places cupped hand behind ear, turning head slightly> “Sounds like…” <more nodding> … We’ve all participated in this scene familiar from the popular game of charades. The convention of the second gesture eliciting the familiar phrase “sounds like…” serves as both title and […]

• PUBLISHED on June 26, 2011

Great King Rabbit – Great King Rabbit follows the manufactured history of its eponymous character. Combining idioms of fine art and propaganda to depict past and present world leaders, Boutin explores ways in which history is constructed to perpetuate both personal and ideological power.

• PUBLISHED on June 22, 2011

Michel Boutin has often been described as a Folk artist heavily influenced by his French Canadian and Métis roots. In previous exhibitions of his work this influence has focused on critiques of the Church, Spirituality and on the historical legacies of his own family’s Settler narratives and Indigenous roots. While stylistically Boutin does borrow from the traditions of Folk art and the discourse around “outsider” art, the Folk label still leaves much off the table.